Vegetarian French Onion Soup

It's been another amazing week in culinary school. One of the multitude of things that we did this week was make French Onion Soup. Traditionally, French Onion Soup is made with beef broth. That said, a fair number of the folks that I know are vegetarian or vegan so I made it my goal to find a way to make the French Onion Soup vegetarian. (The milk products were clarified butter and cheese for the topping but if I had decided to make it vegan I would have used Coconut Oil instead of the butter). I was very happy with the result! Here's the recipe in case anyone would like to give it a whirl. I also found out that using an electric stove to caramelize onions takes FOREVER. I don't know how long it took as compared to when we caramelized onions in class over a gas stove, but it seriously took over an hour. Here's the final soup though, in all of it's onion-y vegetarian glory:

First I made a vegetable broth following the recipe for ingredients but instead of sweating the vegetables I caramelized them and then pinceed them with tomato paste before simmering for 1 hour. Anyway, here's the whole recipe: 

1) The following ingredients were caramelized in 2 oz vegetable oil: 

- 1 lb mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery)

- 4 oz leeks

- 4 peeled garlic cloves

- 4 oz fennel

- 2 oz turnip

- 2 oz tomato

2) After these were caramelized, I added a small can of tomato paste and pincee'd everything.
3) I put in 1 gallon of cold water, 1 cup chablis table wine, and added a sachet d'epice which contained basil, peppercorns, thyme, and a bayleaf.
4) I simmered for an hour then strained it multiple times through a cheesecloth and placed the pot in an icebath while I started on the caramelized onions. Well, it was sort of an ice bath. I used ice packs but they're not as effective as real ice would have been. Unfortunately, I don't have ice on hand so I made do.
5) I caramelized around 3 lbs of yellow onions in a couple ounces of ghee butter (I know I should practice clarifying butter but the ghee is just so convenient!). This step took a LONG TIME.
6) I added 3/4 cup of red wine and reduced it until the onions looked like they were sitting in a red-ish sauce.
7) I added rosemary and all of the cooled vegetable broth. I brought it to a boil and reduced it to a simmer.
8) Simmer for an hour and a half.
9) Season with salt and pepper to taste
10) Serve with toasted bread and cheese broiled over the top of the soup.

Banana chips were an awesome dessert.

And finally here's a picture of an apple, cream cheese, onion, and honey panini I made earlier this week to try out my panini pan. I thought it was pretty. Enjoy!